1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scanning microscope.
This application is based on Japanese Patent Application No. 2007-323588, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to prevent inconvenience that a focal position is vertically displaced due to flexure of a microscope body caused by increased temperature of the body or the like during long observation, a laser scanning microscope has been known in the past, which monitors a luminance value of reflected light from a surface of glass outside a sample as an observation object mounted on the glass, and vertically adjusts a position of an objective lens or a position of a stage to prevent variation in luminance value of the reflected light from the glass surface whenever laser light scan is performed (refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2004-133156, “hereinafter referred to as “JP-A-2004-133156””).
However, the laser scanning microscope described in JP-A-2004-133156 has such inconvenience that while displacement in focal position due to flexure or the like of the microscope body can be corrected, when a sample moves as in the case that the sample includes a biological cell, such movement of the sample cannot be corrected. In particular, while such movement of the sample occurs not only in a vertical direction, but also in a horizontal direction, the movement of the sample cannot be corrected by the laser scanning microscope disclosed in JP-A-2004-133156. In addition, a view field needs to be moved into a region outside the sample to monitor reflected light from the glass surface outside the sample, leading to inconvenience that an observation image of the sample may be broken, or change of the sample may be overlooked.